Rediscovering Deep Work during Covid-19

It took a global crisis to make me aware on just how much I had lost my consistent focus at work, a focus that years previously been the core of my wellbeing and happiness. Reconquering these lost grounds is my most precious project right now. So, I thought I´d share something about it here.

Early in March we (Lindex and I) were in the midst of launching some quite ambitious and potentially transformational digital initiatives concerning our brick and mortar stores. In their wake arrived a whole range of new technologies that we had to put together, workload and team velocity were really ramping up all across. Then, by the end of March I suddenly found myself sending my whole team home from work, shutting down absolutely every initiative mid-step. The only thing I left running was a worrying thin skeleton crew strictly scheduled to keep our lights on, a crew who since then tirelessly kept those lights on by the way (I'm afraid they are the only heroes in this story!).

The reason for our sudden emergency stop was of course the devastating impact of Covid-19 reaching our markets. Although there was some comfort to be found in the fact that our management group acted with decisiveness to save the company, that decisiveness sent almost all of us home within only 3 days with 60% work time removed. But we didn’t just go home like usual, we all went home to an uncertain future and with the unknown personal health and security concerns that follows with a new pandemic.

Layers on layers of worries, like a wet blanket, but also a novel situation, novel situations sometimes bring opportunities, in my case the opportunity for self-reflection.

A look in the mirror

I had since long figured that some things were not ok, but when is really everything ok? The next imaginary pause for self-reflection is always just around the corner, it seems I had self-delusion down to an art as there were no pauses and hardly any corners either, whatever I kept telling myself.

At home I conditioned my family into being used to some tics I developed, for example sometimes I would curse just under my breath, and when inquired on what was going on I would always respond "I was just thinking about work", which after some time made my family just accept this little tic as something normal. On top of this I was made aware by my wife that I tend to talk in my sleep, a lot apparently, and by my dentist that I was grinding down my teeth's to a perfect flat, "They are supposed to be sharp and unregular, yours are perfectly regular and even".

When you take on a lot of work, even work than you like it will inevitably force you to spread yourself thinner and thinner, barely in control. Thin work instead of deep work.

Being responsible of an enabling technology team, I measured our success by the fact that value delivery should never be blocked by me or my team, we needed to keep everyone's flow going.

I had essentially become a person who just facilitated others and made things move as fast as possible.

There were also instances at work, for example I had this presentation for the management group on how to evolve the stores digital network. I did not in any way feel particularly nervous by this talk and just prepared a framework for the topic, giving room for a spontaneous presentation as I felt my spontaneous presentations typically performed better. On top of that it was a topic I was both comfortable with and passionate about.

The mood in the room was good, the presentation before mine had brought in some excellent news when I took my place to do my presentation. As soon as I started talking I found it really hard to focus, my mind drifted and my train of thought broke up in multiple small pieces all over the place, I was quite taken by surprise, felt like I was drowning in my own mind. I struggled to apply enough focus to force the presentation in the right direction but that made things worse, today I can’t even recall what I said, it’s all just blank.

It’s not like turning a button

The Covid-19 crisis brought me something I haven't had in 15 years: huge amounts of unscheduled time. I decided that I would make real good use of this time, I knew I had not been able to write (which I enjoy) for years and I did not read nearly enough.

I was excited. With the kids in school and my wife at work, a perfect home office setup, newly made coffee you would think it would be a walk in the park. I sat down looking through all those articles which I never finished and tried to complete one or two of them. I found that I had absolutely nothing to say, my mind jumping all over the place.

And when I got stuck, Teams, Outlook, social media was just bubbling under the surface poking for my attention.

So, I sat there day after day until I realized I could no longer do focused work at will, at least not on a computer.

Being a friend of technology, I am typically the one championing the power of networks and high performing teams through trust and shared goals. And now I had found that I myself might have lost the ability to do real work at will, which is one of my most precious activities.

As I found I could not force this by will I got worried but finally surrendered to the fact that I would need to find some new way to retrain what I had lost.

Bad habits

For a couple of years, I found that YouTube to my curious mind was an excellent source for interesting interviews and even lectures on favorite topics like AI, physics and technology trends. It’s an absolute great way to comfortably consume the ideas and thoughts of some of the real interesting thinkers we have out there.

Over time this became one of my biggest sources of input, however, after some time I noticed that the information did not remain. This showed when I tried to retell the information I had consumed, then it became clear that it had not settled properly but was scattered in my mind, leaving me unable to spontaneously utilize this information effectively.

I had been wasting a lot of time on YouTube, it was a thin media that would not settle deep information properly, at least not for me.

Rediscovery started with reading

Growing up I had been an avid reader in a fairly intellectual household who by choice did not keep a TV, making me consume thousands of books early in my teens, it had been a secluded upbringing on the countryside but had gifted me with a well-read creative and focused mind.

Going back to my roots, reconnecting with my past felt like an attractive and logical way to recovery. I bought a big pile of books who were of real professional interest, technology, business and way of working, but also some sci-fi books to sugar the deal.

To my absolute horror I discovered I could not read them, I would get lost in thoughts, or disturbed by anything, my cats, my phone, really anything, my mind would wander and jump around. If I no longer could even consume a chapter of a book under perfect circumstances in my own home without losing my focus, what would help then?

I went on a long walk in the forest thinking about new approaches, as I walked in the forest, I went through different approaches with all options open, even pondering new career choices. As I walked there, I suddenly realized that my focus had been excellent the whole walk. That gave me an idea. That same day I downloaded an app for audiobooks and just went straight out the door letting my feet go wherever they pleased.

I found that if I walked in low traffic areas where I did not have to min my surroundings, I could just focus on a point two meters in front of my feet and let the body do the walking. The first couple of walks my thoughts were hijacked and I noticed I had lost the thread of the book and had to rewind. I tried not vexing myself for losing my thoughts, just gently refocusing. As time progressed the focus would remain for a little longer.

At that point I knew I was on the right track. Enjoying 2-3 chapters in a row I also found a sparkle of pure happiness just from nowhere inside me, happiness and content, these feelings were very much rewarding and bolstered my new dedication even more, these were feelings I had been missing.

Deep work

Pushing through my set backlog in great professional literature, mixing it with some pure relaxing entertaining books like David Mitchells "Dishonesty is the second-best policy" who made me laugh a lot causing one or two stares from my fellow by passers.

I recently found myself reading the book "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, and the pieces just came together, this was exactly it, what I had been missing, the book is an absolutely excellent dive into the increasing challenges to perform tasks which require focus and long uninterrupted amounts of time.

Cal reflects on how deep work is becoming more rare and thus more and more valuable. He also argues that any professional within the thought workers realm will benefit from honing the skill of doing actual deep work. Cal bases the argument for Depp work on the fact that its a good investments from a pure value perspective. To me however the perspective of wellbeing and happiness is of far higher importance and a little bit understated in his book in my opinion.

Cal adds solid data on actual outcomes directly connected to the ability to perform deep work from the days of Freud and more urgently into modern times. He also convincingly makes the case that the perceived value in taking input, responding fast to other needs etc. actually is of lower value than typically perceived and communicated.

To me this is a good example of a case where change in behavior will both increase your skills/value and increase your wellbeing.

Doing deep work

Halfway through the pandemic I was called back to work full time again, with the task of investigating a particular technical topic, this gave me an opportunity to try out my focus, I would say that I managed maybe half of my intended time to be real deep work which was very satisfying, I would even say it made me happy, doing this work, I won’t claim that I never failed in focus, in fact I did many times, but I found my way back and achieved multiple long periods of what I would call Deep Work.

Calling it deep work to me means I am self-aware about the quality and depth of my own work and can gently bring my focus back or take a pause doing something that will still my mind when I need it.

I can also see that the value of the work done is higher and the skills acquired are more solid.

The challenge for leaders

Cal puts particular focus on leaders and how the demand for leaders to be facilitators for other people’s opportunities for deep work rather than their own. The agile workplace certainly places the leaders as a facilitator, serving their team, making sure the team can achieve real value, thus often scarifying their own opportunities to perform deep work.

I think leaders should pay attention to their own lack of deep work and for themselves decide if it’s becoming a problem or not, in my case it was, but I don't think it goes for everyone.

Technology doesn't support deep work today

Our technology today is 24/7 networking and zero support for deep work and as Cal states in his book it’s very hard to research the actual impact of this. Personally, my hypothesis is that it depends on the roles, the mission at hand and the individual on when the network leverages individual performances. I think we need to not forget that these two modes, team efforts and individual deep work exists, and both needs to be consciously facilitated depending on above factors.

I would argue that the technology we have today in the workplace only supports one of above two modes, we need other than "away" or "DND" we need "Deep work" to give colleagues the opportunity to know and respect the mode you are in.

I would love this mode to affect my experience on the mobile and the PC, really facilitate for uninterrupted work.

Final reflection

In a larger perspective to me it’s also about rediscovering myself, I'm not longer the young man I was, there is no going back to that person as he no longer exists, the kids are growing up and soon I'm no longer needed in the same way, it seems like I'm discovering that I get great satisfaction from a calm focused reading or working but that it’s up to me to retrain and facilitate for this, it will absolutely not happen by itself, in fact the opposite will be the outcome if I don't put real effort here.

I rediscovered feelings of appreciation, calm and inspiration I have not felt in that way for maybe ten years.

This whole article was written in one go, calmly and focused, to me that would not have been possible just six months ago.

I hope this message will inspire anyone out there caught up in a similar situation to find their own way back.